Reliance Mobile Brings Operator Billing To The Ovi Store In India

Paid applications had been absent from the Indian Ovi Store for a few days now, now we know why – the Ovi Store backend was being overhauled to put operator billing in place. Nokia and Reliance Mobile at a joint event in Mumbai today announced that operator billing was coming to Indian consumers on Reliance Mobile’s networks, making it the first such tie up in India.

The app prices will be shown in Rupees and the ability to pay via the operator would be available to both prepaid and postpaid subscribers. The Ovi Store globally sees 4 million downloads a day, but in India this figure rises to 4.5 million a day.

There is no word on the proposed revenue sharing between Nokia and Reliance. What will be interesting to see is if the other operators also come on board with Nokia, specially since like Reliance, Airtel and Aircel already have their own App Stores. In any case, this is great news for Nokia users in India, specially those who hated the credit card only payment option.